LEWISTON — Using any amount of tax money to move a planned Lewiston-Auburn charter forward is enough to convince at least three Lewiston councilors to vote against it.
“I am completely against a joint charter,” Councilor Shane Bouchard said. “I support having it go to the voters and I support having you do your work, but I don’t support doing it with taxpayer dollars.”
Lewiston-Auburn Charter Commissioners Lucien Gosselin and Chantel Pettengill met with Lewiston Councilors during Tuesday night’s workshop meeting to discuss a resolution supporting their group’s process.
The charter commission needs both Lewiston and Auburn city councils to support that resolution to qualify for an offer of matching money from Gov. Paul LePage.
“It is not a request that we support the outcome of the process, just the continuation of the process,” City Administrator Ed Barrett said.
Gosselin said the charter group could spend up to $100,000 in legal consultant fees in drafting a legal document designed to combine the two cities into one. Whatever the group comes up with will have to be approved by voters in each city independently.
Group members have said they will not ask either city for funding. So far, the group has raised $14,000 from residents and local businesses and has commitments for another $10,000. Member Holly Lasagna and Auburn resident and former Mayor Dick Gleason met with LePage and he offered to match what the group could raise, up to $50,000 over two years.
“The commission is interested in raising funds so they can do some of the analysis required — a legal analysis of the charter they might produce and to look into some of the more specific items, how it could be implemented and the financial impacts it could have,” Barrett said. “Those are the kinds of issues I think everyone would like to see answered before they have to make up their minds on whether or not to support the charter.”
With once councilor missing from Auburn’s meeting last week, councilors split a 3-3 vote on the resolution, sending it down to defeat. Auburn Councilor Adam Lee, who voted against the Auburn version of the resolution, said he plans to bring it back for a vote at a later meeting when the full council is on hand for a vote.
Opinions seemed to stack up similarly in Lewiston on Tuesday night. With Councilor Nate Libby missing from Tuesday’s meeting, three councilors said they supported the charter commission’s work and three said they did not.
For those councilors, any tax revenue, whether it comes from the city property tax payers or LePage, is off the table.
“There are some that are in favor of it, but I cannot tell the people that are not in favor that it’s okay to spend taxpayer dollars,” Councilor Leslie Dubois said.
Councilor Mike Lachance agreed with Dubois and Bouchard.
Mayor Robert Macdonald said the commission’s work has his support.
“All that was said before was that this wasn’t going to cost the city money, and it hasn’t,” Macdonald said.
He was joined by Councilors Donald D’Auteuil, Kristen Cloutier and Mark Cayer.
“The end result is just trying to make sure that citizens are informed when they do make a vote on this,” Cayer said.
Barrett said the Lewiston councilors should vote on the resolution at their June 16 meeting.
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